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KevinB · 03-12-2001, 05:48 AM

The key difference is not whether the modem is internal or external, but whether the moden is hardware or software. All(?) external modens are hardware, that is they use chips and circuits to turn the data into tones for the phone line, plus all the fancy error checking etc.

Most (was 'all' until recently) internal modems are software modems - called WinModems. The card is hardly more than a way to connect the physical phone wires to one of the interface areas of the computer. It uses software to turn the data into tones etc, plus all the overhead of the error checking etc. All this adds an extra load to the CPU that an external modem doesn't. And they don't usually run under Linux (or DOS!)

That said, external modems are limited by the serial port. Old computers had slow serial port UART chips, so internal was often better. That's rarely true on newer machines.

The long and the short of the difference is that you might well not notice if your CPU is 1GHz and you dabble on-line. But use an internal modem to download IE5.5 whilst running your favourite game on the PC, and you'll definitely feel the pinch.

03-12-2001, 05:48 AM	#4
KevinB Member (5 bit) Join Date: Apr 2000 Location: West Yorks, UK Posts: 21	The key difference is not whether the modem is internal or external, but whether the moden is hardware or software. All(?) external modens are hardware, that is they use chips and circuits to turn the data into tones for the phone line, plus all the fancy error checking etc. Most (was 'all' until recently) internal modems are software modems - called WinModems. The card is hardly more than a way to connect the physical phone wires to one of the interface areas of the computer. It uses software to turn the data into tones etc, plus all the overhead of the error checking etc. All this adds an extra load to the CPU that an external modem doesn't. And they don't usually run under Linux (or DOS!) That said, external modems are limited by the serial port. Old computers had slow serial port UART chips, so internal was often better. That's rarely true on newer machines. The long and the short of the difference is that you might well not notice if your CPU is 1GHz and you dabble on-line. But use an internal modem to download IE5.5 whilst running your favourite game on the PC, and you'll definitely feel the pinch.